Just a heads up for anyone running the deferred JavaScript plugin that I’m using on this blog. I’ve been running it on some of my other sites to improve the page load speed but it is a little bit fiddley.

So, on one of my other sites, I have a little more content and some additional features that are controlled via plugins. Some of these plugins inject some JavaScript into the page that relies on jQuery, but as I’m deferring the loading of jQuery, the inline scripts fail and throw errors saying that jQuery is undefined.

A bit annoying really, but not unexpected. So that’s the next challenge, either finding some better plugins that don’t rely on jQuery for simple things that vanilla JavaScript could quite easily do itself without a stupid dependancy, or work out a better way to defer the JS in a nicer way.

As with all of the work I’ve done on this blog so far, I want to do it without having to actually right a lot of code so it’s the type of thing anyone can do for their own blog as I know that not everyone is interested in using a lot of custom code.

If anyone has already taken on this challenge, let me know. Maybe we could come up with a post on solving it together.

Over the past week I’ve been doing a little more fine tuning and working a few things out about how to improve the performance of this site. After all, if this site is all about making faster web sites then I should make sure I’ve done what I can to set a good example.

There are some classic mistakes that you can make with WordPress and I’ve seen it happen again and again. Plugin addiction is a serious condition and once you have this condition it’s hard to get over it. The best way of combatting this disease is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Read on to see what plugins I use by default.

Over the last 15 years I’ve had experience of lots of hosting services. Some better than others. As my experience has increased, my requirements for hosting has changed from being cheap and easy to use, to being more performant, better services but still within a sensible budget.

Ok, so this is a web site all about making web sites faster and you’ve no doubt noticed that I’m choosing WordPress. No, I’m not mad, I’ve done it for a two main reasons.

According to the WordPress wiki page, WordPress is now used by just over 23% of the top 10 million web sites and it’s a popular choice for many people who want to start their own site.

But, the purpose of this site is not solely to make the fastest WordPress web site that I can, there are some techniques that I’m unlikely to be able to do given my hosting platform and budget. The purpose of this web site is to share the information on best practices and what is possible. I will, of course, apply as much as possible to this site and show the benefits the techniques can give.

This is a playground, an experiment, a trial and a bit of fun. Nothing serious, but maybe helpful to a few people.

It’s a place where I can learn more about making web sites faster from the point of view of many people who run their own web sites. Not massively techy about everything about the web, but knows enough to be dangerous.

I haven’t got deep pockets to buy the best hosting solution possible, like many people, so this is just a little corner of the web that I hope will not slow you down no matter how you view this site.